Von BALTHASAR, H. U., Gloria. Una Estética Teologica, 1. La Percepcion de La Forma, Encuentro, 1985

Augustine's Rejection of the Free-Will Defence: An Overview of the Late Augustine's
Theodicy
Author(s): Jesse Couenhoven
Source: Religious Studies, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Sep., 2007), pp. 279-298
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20006375
Accessed: 28-02-2019 18:36 UTC
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20006375?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Religious Studies
This content downloaded from 163.178.101.95 on Thu, 28 Feb 2019 18:36:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Religious Studies 43, 279-298 ? 2007 Cambridge University Press
doi:10.1017/S0034412507009018 Printed in the United Kingdom
Augustine's rejection of the free-will defence: an

overview of the late Augustine's theodicy
JESSE COUENHOVEN
Department of Humanities and Augustinian Traditions, Villanova University,
800 Lancaster Avenue, Villanova, PA 19085
Abstract: Augustine is commonly considered the greatest early proponent of what

we call the free-will defence, but this idea is deeply misleading, as Augustine grew
increasingly dissatisfied with the view from an early point in his career, and his later
explorations of the implications of his doctrines of sin and grace led him to reject
free-will theodicies altogether. As a compatibilist, however, he continued to reject
the idea that God is responsible for the advent of evil. His alternative was his often
misunderstood claim that the primal sin had a 'deficient' cause, together with a
version of what Alvin Plantinga has nominated the 'felix culpa' approach. Thus,
Augustine was actually the free-will defence's first major Christian detractor, and by
the end of his career he had become its greatest critic.
In his late work, The Grace of Christ, while discussing Pelagius' reasons for
pursuing a free-will approach, St Augustine contends that Pelagius envisions the
free will as ultimately neutral, balanced between the possibilities of good and evil:
God makes human beings with a dual ability for good or evil, and then we make of
ourselves what we will. This approach is compelling because it seems to solve the
theodical problem - making human beings, and not God, to blame for evil - and,
Augustine writes, 'I think I can see what he was afraid of {GPO, I.16.17).1
A fear of making God blameworthy for sin led Augustine himself to advocate a
free-will theodicy early in his career, and presumably that fact explains why it is
commonly thought that St Augustine was, if not the inventor of what we now call
the free-will defence, at least its greatest early proponent. The HarperCollins
Dictionary of Religion, for instance, indicates in its article on 'theodicy' that
Augustine was the main classical Christian advocate of responding to the prob?
lem of evil with a free-will defence (Smith (1995), 1066; also see Adams (1999), 34;
Evans (1982), ch. 5; Kirwan (1989), chs 5-6.) .2 About a decade ago, however,
Rowan Greer raised some important questions about that view. Greer's
279
280 JESSE C0UENH0VEN
argument - based on a wide knowledge of Augustine's forbearers, and a close

reading of Augustine's On Free Choice of the Will - is that versions of the free-will
defence were standard Christian Platonist views, views Augustine inherited upon
his conversion to the Catholic faith, but soon began to question and transform
(Greer (1996)).3 Augustine finds himself wondering why human beings continu?
ally misuse the freedom God has given, and he ends up arguing that because of
our negative inheritance from Adam, * man cannot rise by his own free will as he
fell by his own will spontaneously' {LibAr, II.10.54). Augustine is left with the view
that ' the capacity of choosing good or evil now attaches only to Adam and Even
before the fall' (Greer (1996), 479). Quite early on, then, Augustine believed he had
found a weakness in the free-will defence - for if the view just expressed is true, a
free-will defence loses much of its sparkle. If all post-lapsarian human beings are
unable to love God properly, the divine gift of self-determination becomes a
much less attractive explanation for the problem of evil.
In On Free Choice Augustine's response to this problem is merely to tweak the
free-will defence by suggesting that although post-Fall humanity cannot will
to love God directly, we can nevertheless seek divine grace for assistance. It is
well-known, however, that Augustine later came to reject this view. He came
to believe, instead, that a person unable to choose his or her loves with regard to
everyday good or evil, let alone to love the absolute Good, would not be able to
choose to seek God for help, either - a view that became one basis for his doctrine
of prevenient grace.
My argument in the present essay is that this, amongst other developments
traced below, led Augustine to reject the free-will defence altogether. He became
a compatibilist, though he continued to believe that evil is not caused, but is
rather permitted, by God, because God was able to use evil to produce a greater
good. Thus, far from being the classic exponent of the free-will defence,
Augustine was actually its first major detractor, and by the end of his career he
had become the free-will defence's most enduring critic.
The end of the free-will defence trial period
Whether scholars of Augustine interpret him as a compatibilist or

not - and many have trouble recognizing that ' free will ' can have anything other
than an incompatibilist sense (the leading handbook on Augustine, a massive
volume entitled Augustine Through the Ages, omits any reference to compati
bilism) - they typically take for granted that he considered Adam and Eve's wills
free in an incompatibilist sense (e.g. Baker (2003), 463-464). It is widely held that
though Augustine places increasing limitations on human free will post-Fall, he
always maintained that Adam and Eve, at least, were ' free ' to choose either good
or evil, obedience or forbidden fruit. In addition, it is widely believed that
Augustine considered the self-determining free choice of those first two human
Augustine and the free-will defence 281
beings valuable enough for God to have allowed sin and evil to enter the world.
This, it is thought, is why Augustine claims that God made Adam and Eve posse
non peccare - sinless, with the possibility of not sinning - and not, like the saints
in heaven, non posse peccare - perfect, with the impossibility of sinning. If God
had made Adam and Eve with the impossibility of sinning, their free will would
have been vitiated, and the good of determining for themselves their most fun?
damental loves would have been lost. Unfortunately, this reading of Augustine
fails to take into consideration the development of Augustine's thought about the
problem of evil during his arguments with the Pelagians, as he elaborated his
doctrines of original sin and prevenient grace (see Couenhoven (2005)).
Augustine flirted with a free-will theodicy as late as The Spirit and the Letter,
written around 412 CE. Near the end of that work he considers why not everyone
believes in God - in his mind the greatest of all evils, and the source of the
rest - and he tentatively replies that free choice is a neutral power able to turn to
faith or unbelief {SL, 33-57-8). God wills for all to be saved, Augustine suggests, but
not so as to deprive them of free choice. This does not infringe on divine sover?
eignty, because although unbelievers act against God's will when they do not
believe, they do not defeat His will, since God willingly allows human choice and
then punishes or rewards accordingly. God also offers to assist everyone by
arranging external circumstances so that persons are enticed to choose the good,
and even by working internally, bringing to mind thoughts that are good - but
only some assent to this help {SL, 34-6o).
This passage is widely considered a classic locus for Augustine's late under?
standing of theodicy, but interpreters have all too often ignored the caveats with
which Augustine begins and ends the discussion just summarized. He begins by
saying, ' Let us ... set forth this idea and see whether it provides a satisfactory
answer' {SL, 3458), and he concludes with a less than ringing endorsement: 'If
this discussion is enough to resolve the question, let it suffice' {SL, 34.60). But it is
not at all clear, in fact, that the discussion is enough to resolve Augustine's
questions. After proposing his solution, similar to that with which he had con?
cluded On Free Choice, Augustine admits that he is not able to understand why
one person is stirred to the point of being convinced while another is not. Thus,
the free-will defence leaves Augustine with his old question about the inexplica
bility of incompatibilist free choice and why it is so regularly put to a bad use.
Once again, he finds the free-will defence psychologically unsatisfying (see
Stump (2001), 139, who cites DDP, 8.16,18 and 11.26-27).
Augustine never again champions a free-will theodicy in any of his major
works. Moreover, he actively disputes the theory for a variety of reasons, some
scriptural, and others related to the development of his doctrines of sin and grace.
In addition, he begins to expound a replacement for the free-will approach.
We might read Augustine's response to Pelagius in The Grace of Christ, in
418 CE, as a comment on the view he defended in his early works, and tried out in
282 JESSE COUENHOVEN
The Spirit and the Letter. In reply to Pelagius' suggestion that we are born without
virtue or vice and have the ability for each alternative implanted in us by God,
Augustine argues there is not one root of good and evil actions - an undetermined
will - but two separate roots {GPO, I.18.19; 2.13.14). Covetousness is the root of all
evils, but properly ordered love is the root of all good. A good person has a good
will, which loves properly, and a bad one has a bad will, which covets. What then
explains the bad will, if not a natural power for alternates? Augustine only hints at
his answer here: the origin of the bad will is falling away from the good {GPO,
I.19.20). Since God bestows only one of these possibilities, the good will,
Augustine contends that God is not responsible for evil. Let us now consider how
he developed these claims.
Augustine's objections to free-will approaches
Augustine's expressions of dissatisfaction with the free-will approach in?

dicate that he considered the approach at best psychologically inert-since
it leaves human choices mysterious and inexplicable - and at worst actively
misleading - implying that human beings have more control over their choices
than experience (and, he came to believe, scripture) suggests. Given the com?
plexity of this topic, no more than a thumbnail sketch of the way in which this
concern about free will is developed in his late works can be offered here. But
with that caveat in mind, let us consider Augustine's late view of the liherum
arbitrium (free choice) Adam and Eve had before the Fall.
One might wonder why I begin with Adam and Eve rather than the angels. The
angels, however, deserve second billing in our discussion, not only because his
treatment of them is less than clear, but because Augustine thinks the blessed?
ness of the pair in the garden might have been quite different from that of the
angels. This leads him to say in one place that the devil must have sinned
immediately on being created, unlike Adam and Eve {GnLit, XI.19.25-23.30; but
for a contrasting view, CD, XI.12-19, XII.i; also DCG, 10.27; DDP, 7.13). Indeed,
Augustine suggests that every angel was immediately and eternally confirmed in
whatever choice it made upon being created; for one good discussion, see Burns
(1988), 18. Augustine's discussion of the human fall is also much more detailed
than his treatment of the angelic fall, and casts important light on the latter, to
which we will return.
In his discussion of the human fall, Augustine tells us that his great Pelagian
opponent Julian believes an evil will could arise just as a good will could, Adam
and Eve's pre-lapsarian wills having been in a kind of intermediate position be?
tween these alternatives. Augustine dissents, however, noting that this makes it
seem as though the first couple was ' made without a good will. Man was made
upright, as scripture said. The question, then, is not how the good will with which
he was made, but how the evil will with which he was not made, could have come
to be in him' {Oplmp, V.38; see DCG, 11.32). Christ, Augustine believes, was born
righteous; similarly, the first couple was made upright, as is stated in a scriptural
passage on which Augustine came to depend heavily, Ecclesiastes 7.29 {CD,
XXII.i, XIV.11; Oplmp, V.57, 61, IV.83).
Augustine's gloss on 'upright' is not simply that Adam and Eve were without
sin when they were created, but that God made their wills oriented towards their
true Good. That is, they were made with love for God. Making the first couple with
good wills was God's only real creative option, Augustine contends, because the
will cannot stand in between, and be neither bad nor good. If we love righteous?
ness, the will is good; if we love it more, the will is better - but if we do not love
righteousness, the will is not good {PeccMer, II.18.30). There is therefore no logical
space for a will that is neither good nor evil, and God is unable to make human
beings in a neutral position, in addition to being unwilling to create beings with
evil wills. For Augustine, if God had made us with divided wills, loving and hating
evil, our wills would have been evil, on the whole: goodness requires a purity that
evil, given its nature as a privation, does not.
Augustine's view that God made human beings with wills oriented towards the
good depends not only on Ecclesiastes 7.29, but also on his view that the creation
account makes it clear that before they became evil, Adam and Eve were created
morally good {DCG, 11.32; Oplmp, V.41, 57). In addition, Augustine came to believe
that one of the reasons it is a fault to withdraw from God is that it is more natural
to adhere to him : evil is contrary to that for which we were created, or it is not
evil at all {CD, XI.17, XXII.i). Thus, the first couple must have had an original
righteousness, which consisted in their obeying God and not having the law of
carnal concupiscence in their members {PeccMer, II.23.37).4 They were not, like
the saints in heaven, unable to sin, but they were entirely able not to sin, which is
a lesser form of goodness {DGC, 12.33; GnLit, XI.7.9).
Augustine's belief that Adam and Eve were made with wills already oriented to
the good has important implications for our understanding of his late view of free
choice. Though the full story is too complex to tell here, Augustine's thought
about the role of free choice in human willing is summarized in his late dis?
cussions of the temptation of Eve. Augustine notes in a number of places that
when the first couple sinned in the Garden, they were preceded by the serpent,
who tempted Eve {Cful, VI.22.68; CD, XIV.11; DeTrin, XII.17). The serpent's
suggestion aroused Eve's delight in the forbidden fruit, and she and Adam then
consented to eating it. This triad of suggestion, delight, and consent provides a
rubric that Augustine often, implicitly as well as explicitly, applies in his dis?
cussions of willing (see Burns (1988), 19; Kirwan (1989), 89; TeSelle (1994), (2002)).
Augustine contends that what comes to mind - what is suggested to us - is not
fully under our control; for instance, he cites Ambrose's statement that ' our heart
and our thoughts are not in our power. When they pour in unexpectedly, they
confuse the mind and spirit and drag it elsewhere than you intended it to go '
{DDP, 8.20). If we cannot control what is suggested to us, one might hope that it is
at least in our power to choose our responses to the suggestions of our random
thoughts, or to what is simply seen or heard. As the quotation above indicates,
however, Augustine does not believe that life is so simple; our hearts are no more
under our control than our minds. Internal orientations, in us by nature or cus?
tom, or inclinations provoked by the attractive power of a variety of goods, make
it difficult to control our desires by choice. Indeed, Augustine came to believe that
it is really our delights that drive us, our choices simply following as a ratification
of our deepest desires. Thus, Augustine comes to speak of choice as consent, and
while consent is to be distinguished from delight, the former depends on the
latter.
In brief, then, Augustine's view is that we consent to what attracts us - based
both on our affections and our reasons (see Wetzel (1992), 84). I will appropriate
Peter Brown's phrase and call this Augustine's ' psychology of delight' (Brown, P.
(1969), 154-155). The dependence of human willing on things that delight is a
theme Augustine returns to regularly in his later works. Even The Spirit and the
Letter indicates that we will not follow what we should pursue unless it delights us
(SL 35.63). Elsewhere he writes that sinners
... do not will to do what is right, whether because they do not know whether it is right
or because they find no delight in it. For we will something with greater strength in
proportion to the certainty of our knowledge of its goodness and the deep delight we
find in it'. {PeccMer, II.17.26; see also 11.19-33, and Burnaby (1938), 220-226; Harrison
(2000), 94-96; O'Daly (1989), 92; Rist (1969), 422)
Thus, consent depends on delight.

Rowan Greer has insightfully argued that Augustine makes this point using
another terminology, as well. Greer claims that, starting as early as On Free Choice
I.11.21, Augustine
... introduces a novel distinction between 'free will'{liberum arbitrium) and 'will'
[voluntas). He repeatedly uses the expression ' the free choice of the will, ' and in this
way treats the relation between the two terms as correlative with motive and act. That
is, 'will' is a way of speaking of what motivates our 'free choices'. (Greer (1996), 479; see
also Greer (2001), ch. 3)
Thus, voluntas is the basic orientation of the mind - which Augustine equates
with delight - that motivates our choices {liberum arbitrium).5
One of the fundamental shifts in Augustine's thought about the free-will the?
odicy is that Augustine applies these convictions he holds about human willing in
general to Adam and Eve in particular. That is, he comes to believe that what is
true about the structure of human willing after the Fall must have been true
before it as well. Thus, he contends that for Adam and Eve, too, the springs of
action are not in an indeterminate power, but in one's basic orientation, either a
proper or an improper love.6
In short, Augustine came to believe that Adam and Eve's freedom, their libertas,
was of a compatibilist sort; they were created to choose what delighted them, and
what they were created to delight in was God.7 Augustine is not committed to a
thoroughgoing psychological (or causal) determinism, however; he holds there
are times when what is most true and loveable is not chosen - such as when our
best reasons for choosing a thing simply fail to come to mind. It should also be
emphasized that his psychology of delight includes important elements of intel
lectualism. It is a general truth for Augustine that we desire what seems true and
right - even sinners, Augustine believes, sin because they propose a reason for
doing so {Cful, VI.24.75). Augustine also believes, sensibly, that we can love a thing
more the better we understand it {DeTrin, XIII.3.6-4.9). Thus, desire and intellect
are closely tied (see DeTrin, XII.12.r7).
The fact that God made human beings with good wills indicates that liberum
arbitrium, even before the Fall, was not a power for opposites, but a power for
consenting to the good in which God created human beings to delight (partly for
this reason, Augustine rejects what some call the principle of alternate possi?
bilities, but that is not a matter that can be addressed here). This power can be
sinfully misused, but such a use of liberum arbitrium is not only improper but
faulty. God prepared the way for humanity to choose the good - that is what
choice is for. It is only a kind of madness and nihilation that allows human beings
to take a different path.
We have seen so far that Augustine rejects free-will theodicies both because he
believes that affirmation of a neutral will clashes with the scriptural claim that
God made the first couple upright, and because he felt that the picture of human
willing provided by a free-will approach was inadequate. As Augustine became
more thoroughly compatibilist in his thinking about the structure of the human
will, he was inclined to think of Adam and Eve's freedom and choice in a manner
that accorded with the views he was developing in his treatises on original sin and
grace.
Augustine also became dissatisfied with the free-will defence because he came
to believe that it cannot fully address the problem it is meant to solve (intri
guingly, this is a claim that is presently gaining a hearing (see Adams (1999), ch. 3
and Plantinga (2004)). While discussing the will of the angels, for instance,
Augustine suggests that the proposal that the angels produced a good or bad will
in themselves by their independent choice intimates that God left them quite
vulnerable to evil {CD, XII.9). Thus, Augustine claims that an incompatibilist view
leaves God more responsible for evil than his compatibilist view.
Augustine also draws back from a free-will theodicy because he concludes that
the free-will approach implies not only that the persons God created needed
improvement but that the improvement had to be supplied by those persons
themselves, acting independently (see CD, XII.9; Babcock (1988), 40-44). This
latter thought is directly contrary to the doctrine of prevenient grace to which
Augustine grew increasingly committed as he grew older. Augustine's considered

opinion is that only God can give good wills. This is not simply a point about
human weakness in sin, for him. To be sure, Augustine asserts that human beings
with bad wills, such as those who exist after the Fall, do not have the resources to
chance their fundamental orientation from being disordered to one of faith in
and love for God. Augustine's more fundamental commitment, however, is that
goodness can only come from the absolute and super-personal source of good
(see, e.g., DPS, 3.7-7.12; DDP, 8.16-18,11.26-27). This is a point he felt held as much
before the Fall as after {CD, 14.27).
Finally, Augustine became convinced that autonomous free choice is not so
great a good, in itself, that it would be appropriate to prefer it to a good will. Thus
he tells Julian that ' innocence, if you pay close attention, is a greater good than
free choice' {Oplmp, VI.32). Once choice is relegated to secondary status, a free?
will theodicy loses much of what made it appear compelling. Augustine's con?
sidered opinion is that incompatibilist free choice is simply not worth the price of
evil, sin, and suffering.
A new 'explanation' of the Fall
By the end of his life, Augustine had an array of reasons for rejecting the
free-will defence to which he had once been drawn. The late Augustine was
a compatibilist - even about pre-lapsarian wills (cf. Rogers (2004)). However,
Augustine also steadily rejected divine responsibility for the Fall, and divine de?
terminism along with it. In place of either a free-will theodicy or divine deter?
minism, Augustine began to articulate a view that has often, ironically, been
mistaken for both of the views he rejected. His new view began with a new
understanding of the condition of the possibility of the Fall, summarized in the
following passage :
The angel or the human being, then, was able to sin precisely for this reason, that is,
each of them was able to make bad use of this gift of God, namely, free choice,
precisely because neither of them is God, that is, each is made by God, not out of God.
[Oplmp, V.38)
This approach is developed in a number of his later works (see O'Daly (1989),
87-89). As we have seen, Augustine claims that while evil is brought about by free
choice {C2Ep, III.9.25; Ench, 105), choice is not fundamentally a neutral power for
opposites but an ability to consent that is tied to the affections and reason of the
person whose choice it is. Rational beings were created with good wills - that is,
with love for God, the highest good {CD, XII.9), and God made free choice good, as
well {C2Ep, III.9.25). Indeed, choice had a clear telos: 'For Adam was created with
free choice so that he could not sin if he did not will to, not so that, if he willed to,
he could sin' {Oplmp, V.38). An evil will could arise from this good nature, then,
not fundamentally because choice is a power for opposites, but because created
beings are made from nothing, and thus (unlike God, who cannot sin) have the
ontological possibility of falling away from the good {DNC, II.28.48; CD, XII.6;
Oplmp, V.38).
Augustine makes his central claims in two important passages :
... the evil act... was committed only when those who did it were already evil; that bad
fruit could only come from a bad tree. Further, the badness of the tree came about
contrary to nature, because without a fault in the will, which is against nature, it
certainly could not have happened. But only a nature created out of nothing could
have been distorted by a fault. ... its falling away from its true being is due to its
creation out of nothing. [CD, XIV.13; see CD, XII.i)
But the first evil act of will... was rather a falling away from the work of God to its own
works, rather than any substantive act... an evil will is not natural but unnatural,
because it is a defect... .[CD, XIV.11; see CJul, I.8.36-8; CD, XII.6)
The primal sins were not substantial acts; rather, Augustine speaks of angelic and
human sin as a ' falling away' {CD, XII.i). Thus, he came to think of all primal sins
more as a slipping than a turning away (see Burns (1980), 110; (1988), 15). This Fall
was made possible, though not necessary, by creation out of nothing.
Augustine does not puzzle over good choices that might have been made before
the Fall; in addition to the good nature with which they were created, Adam and
Eve were helped by what was ' not a small grace ' so they could will the good {DCG,
11.31). Far from being inevitable, the Fall was unlikely. Therefore, what confuses
Augustine is the bad choice - but here we should pause, for it is actually inac?
curate to maintain that Augustine is confused by the choice to eat the forbidden
fruit. Rather, he is confused by the advent of the evil desire on which that bad
choice was founded; the choice is not inexplicable, given the presence of the evil
desire. Of course, Augustine often writes that the primal sin is an evil choice. It is
important, then, to note that his description of the primal sin in his Literal
Commentary on Genesis XI and City of God XIV.11-14 makes it clear that Adam and
Eve flirted with desires that should not have been attractive to them, had their
hearts not already been turned to sin before they actually chose to disobey. The
evil act, as the quotation above says, is based on an evil will (the bad tree).
Properly put, then, what confuses Augustine is this evil will. His solution to the
problem is controversial: Augustine argues that the Fall is fundamentally inex?
plicable, a matter of deficiency {CD, XII.6-7, 9). The advent of the evil will cannot
be explained by anything more basic than itself-the devil's crafty suggestion
does not fully explain this desire, for disobedience would not have been attractive
to a good will. Here, Augustine says, is the undetermined will that Pelagius, and
his follower Julian, sought {NG, 30.34, 46.54; Oplmp, I.78, 79, 85, V.51). From his
later perspective, however, this possibility is not grounded in an innate power for
choosing between opposites. Rather, the paradigm case of Pelagius's undeter?
mined will is simply a malfunctioning will, a deficient form of desiring that can
have only a negative direction. Augustine's late view is that any inexplicable de?
sire must be evil, because like Adam and Eve's radical desire for the forbidden
fruit, it must be opposed to the good for which human beings were made (see
Burrell (1993), 91-92). And as a faulty act of will, Augustine believes it is not really
free at all. Thus, Augustine turns from what we might (for want of better terms)
call a psychological understanding of the first sin to an ontological understanding
of the Fall.
Augustine's suggestion that the primal sin was made possible by the fact that
human beings are made from nothing, and can fall back into it, is not intended as
an explanation of why the Fall happened : it simply indicates the condition of the
possibility of the Fall. Augustine adds that sin was also possible (though again, not
necessary) because, though the first couple was greatly graced by God, they were
not given the special grace of perseverance necessary to confirm them in their
created goodness {DCG, 10.26; DDP, 7.13). For Augustine, what both of these facts
have in common is the further, and more basic, fact that when God created Adam
and Eve, God did not elect to unify them with himself in the manner in which the
saints in heaven are unified with God in Christ. A being unified with Christ in that
way partakes of the divine nature itself, and comes to share in the divine inability
for sin - this, Augustine comes to believe, is the reason for the higher libertas of
the saints in heaven, who are so completely free from weakness that they find it
impossible to sin.
So creation ex nihilo, combined with lack of union with the divine, made it
possible for Adam and Eve to desire what they should not have, and thus to
choose to eat the forbidden fruit. Nevertheless, doing so was nonsensical: God
not only made them with good wills, but made them so intelligent that Adam was
able to name all of the animals, and in addition, God both gave them the grace to
love him and threatened them with death if they disobeyed his command {DCG,
12.35)!
Katherin Rogers (2004) is hardly alone in thinking that Augustine contradicts
himself on this point in a discussion of the fall of the angels in City of God, XII.9,
where he seems to imply that God made the angelic fall inevitable, because God
withholds a grace they needed in order not to fall. It is best, however, to read
Augustine's confusing and brief comment on this topic in the light of his longer
and more perspicuous discussion of Adam and Eve's fall. In that context,
Augustine's suggestion that the angels who fell may have done so because 'they
received less grace of the divine love ' should not be read as indicating that they
had to fall. Because Augustine is always anxious to defend God from blame for
evil (that is, he admits that God permits evil, but never that God causes it or
makes it necessary), it is highly doubtful that he is allowing himself to speculate
that some angels were divinely determined to fall. Rather, Augustine is suggesting
that the condition of the possibility of their falling was that they did not receive
that grace that makes it impossible to sin. He is not, however, suggesting that this
explains or accounts for the primal sin - a fall that he considers uncaused and
inexplicable. On Rogers's reading of Augustine the Fall was necessitated by divine
negligence, but Augustine's view is that the Fall was not at all necessary; it was
not even caused.
Thus, though the ontological analysis of the possibility of the Fall outlined
above does not explain sin's advent, Augustine does not mean it to {contra Robert
F. Brown (1978), 319-324). Rather, he indicates that no explanation for the primal
sin is available, and that none should be sought: instead of an efficient cause,
Augustine writes with rhetorical flourish, sin has a 'deficient' cause {CD, XII.6;
XII.7, 9). He is claiming that the primal sin lacked both cause and explanation;
far from being necessary, or even reasonable, it was perverse.8 The primal sin, as
a desire for a lesser good, and ultimately harmful knowledge, is inexplicable,
because Adam and Eve were created to rest in God.
This ontological analysis of the Fall fits Augustine's privation account of evil,
according to which sin is a falling from the good, a defect. The sin of that first
couple was a sin of falling away; they became less than they were made to be. And
while Augustine is thus left without an explanation of how the Fall happened, he
is able to provide an explanation for his inability to explain the Fall: if the primal
sin made sense, it would not have been as bad as Augustine believed it was.
Falling back into nothing occurred, Augustine indicates, against the odds, and the
fact that we cannot explain why it occurred is fitting, since the more sense we can
make of the Fall, the less disturbing and worrisome - and the more logical and
acceptable - it might seem. For Augustine the Fall is a surd, and appropriately so.
Augustine's treatment of the primal sin as not a turning away, but a fall, re?
inforces my claim that Augustine rejects determinism. Thus, our understanding
of his 'psychology of delight' must be nuanced: his treatment of the Fall suggests
that some evil desiring, though not choice or consent, is radical and mysterious
(cf. Chappell (1995), 190-192; Gilbert (1963), 18). However, this does not make
Augustine some kind of libertarian about free will; it simply means that
Augustine's compatibilism does not commit him to, or depend on, belief in de?
terminism. First, Augustine is not generally libertarian because his psychology of
delight remains his general rubric. Good choices are always (properly) motivated,
and sin is rarely (if ever, pear-stealing notwithstanding!) as fully inexplicable as
the primal sin. He makes it clear that post-lapsarian human beings love inordi?
nately, and must, because of the disordered fundamental orientation called
original sin. The behaviours that arise from this state of carnal concupiscence are
explicable in terms of Augustine's psychology of delight, since sinners will what
seems good according to their fallen delights.
Second, Augustine is not a libertarian concerning the primal sin, either. He
claims, after all, that the radical autonomous changes in delight that constituted
the Fall were not only unplanned and uncontrolled, but not even substantial acts,
as we saw above.9 Such changes could only be uni-directional; they had to be falls
away from God, and into nothingness. That is hardly an incompatibilist freedom;
it is not a power at all, but an uncontrolled weakness.
Augustine's idea that the Fall had a deficient cause might seem philosophically
untenable. Can he avoid falling prey to Rogers's charge that in the end he makes
God 'the author of sin'? Augustine's interpreters must be careful here. First, it is
important to note that Augustine's rejection of the free-will defence naturally
raises significant questions. Second, it is important to clarify that in one central
respect Augustine's late view of God's relationship to evil is the same as his early
view: all along, Augustine was committed to the belief that God was partially
responsible for the Fall, since God permitted it to happen. Early and late,
Augustine considers God responsible for sin's advent - he simply insists that God
has good reasons for letting the Fall happen, only some of which we understand.
What changes as Augustine rejects incompatibilist understandings of free will is
how Augustine thinks the Fall happened, as well as some of the reasons he offers
for saying that we should not blame God for permitting the Fall.
Third, the fact that one sees problems raised by Augustine's late view is not a
reason to ascribe to Augustine the view that God is to be blamed for sin, because
that is clearly a view he rejects. In his writings on how original sin is transmitted,
Augustine objects to the 'creationist' idea that God creates fallen souls precisely
because it makes God responsible for making souls evil. Augustine makes it clear
that he is ' certain that the soul has fallen into sin by no fault of God, by no
necessity of God or of its own ' {Letter 166, II.5 ; brought to my attention by Rombs
(2006), xxvii). The exegetical task is to present what Augustine said; whether those
views are tenable is a matter that cannot be properly addressed here.
That said, I should admit that I lack others' confidence that Augustine's
understanding of the Fall as a 'surd' is entirely deficient. Indeed, critics often
apply a double standard in objecting to the idea of a deficient cause, since many
of them are committed to something like agent causation, a view at least as
mysterious as Augustine's late representation of the Fall. My sense is that
Augustine presents compatibilists with an alternative to Calvin's view that is
worth exploring. Interestingly, moreover, Augustine's view has much in common
with Karl Barth's discussion of sin as an ' impossible possibility, ' a view that many
theologians, at least, have found attractive; for an instructive discussion, see
Wolterstorff (1996).
A happy fault?
We have considered Augustine's reasons for rejecting a free-will theodicy,

and his redescription of the condition of the possibility of the Fall. Nothing,
however, has been said about why the late Augustine thinks God should not be
blamed for sin, given that God knew the Fall would take place even in spite of His
having made everything very good.
Augustine addresses the divine logic of permitting the devil's fall in a meta?
phorical reading of Genesis he proposes in City of God. This reading can appear to
advance an aesthetic theory about evil that he had advocated earlier in his life,
and which many believe Augustine never abandoned: a Plotinian divine ordering
theodicy, according to which the divine ordering of evil contributes to the overall
beauty of the universe (see Adams (1999); Burnaby (1938), 195-196; Greer (1996),
480-482). After noting that the angels are not mentioned in the creation account,
and suggesting that Genesis may refer to them metaphorically in speaking of the
creation of the light and the dark-meaning the holy and fallen angels,
respectively - Augustine evokes a picture of the creation as a great and beautiful
painting, beautiful when it 'has touches of black in appropriate places', along
with lighter colors elsewhere {CD, XI.23). The beauty of this divine work of art
depends in part on the contrast between the light and dark colours that make it
up. Augustine also argues that the sovereign divine interweaving of colours is
accomplished as evil is put into its proper place by the penalties assessed to evil,
' so that the penalty of sin corrects the dishonour of sin' {DLA, III.9.25-6).
Yet, as Greer has noted, an aesthetic theodicy is at odds with Augustine's
commitment that evil is a privation. Sin, as a falling away from the good, cannot
be made to contrast positively with the good simply by being appropriately
punished, even if that punishment is itself a good (as Adams (1999), 39-43, also
argues). The aesthetic approach implies that sin is actually the opposite of the
good, which can be put in its proper place, thereby enhancing the overall beauty
of the universe. The privation theory, however, implies, to the contrary, that sin is
simply the good, harmed. On the privation account, sin is not like a dark colour of
paint that contrasts with lighter colours; rather, it is more like holes in the canvas
that detract from what the picture originally was supposed to portray, or an un?
pleasant change in tint and texture over the entire canvas.
Thus, an aesthetic explanation for the divine permission of evil fails on
Augustine's own terms. Happily, however, it is possible to read Augustine's
discussion of the fall of the angels in a manner that does not invoke this self
contradictory aesthetic theodicy. And once again, it is easier to interpret
Augustine if we begin by discussing Adam and Eve.
In his treatment of why non-angelic sin was permitted, Augustine shows that a
version of the theme of the divine ordering of the universe can be a coherent and
thought-provoking option, when, as Rowan Williams has argued, that ordering is
understood as the historical process of God's salvific responses to evil, rather than
the way ' evil ' might be said to look beautiful in the eyes of an ideal observer
seeing everything at once (see Williams (2002)). Augustine appeals to this theme
of divine ordering when he writes that ' evil things are allowed to exist in order to
show how the righteousness and foreknowledge of the Creator can turn even
those very evils to good account' {CD, XIV.11). God permits evil, therefore, be?
cause He knows He can bring good out of it {CD, XIV.27; GnLit, XI.4-11). Indeed,
Augustine claims that it was good that God did not make the Fall impossible. The
reason is not, as in the free-will defence, that God built into creation a good
(incompatibilist free choice) that can be preserved by permitting evil; Augustine's
late view is that God permits evil because by doing so a new and greater good
could be brought to pass.
The good that God brings out of evil takes two forms. The first is epistemic : He
orders evil by having it show how foolish and bad disobedience to Him really is,
how just He is in punishing those who disobey, and, by contrast, how great His
mercy really is. Without the Fall, and negative consequences for it, Augustine
believes that we would not be able to understand just how terrible sin is, and just
how amazingly gracious God is. The Fall, then, is permitted, in part, because it
can lead to the good of a better understanding of God, what God is for, and what
God is against.
Augustine also indicates that God permitted the Fall because of a relational
good that God knew He would bring out of human evil, and to which the epis?
temic good just mentioned is ordered. God permitted the Fall He foreknew be?
cause He knew that great good could be brought out of it by the incarnation,
death, and resurrection of Christ, ' in whom we have obtained our lot, predestined
according to the plan of him who accomplishes all things ' (Ephesians, 1.11, cited
in DDP, 7.14; cf. Rist (1994), 282-283). In bringing the human and the divine into
unity in Christ, and in then bringing human beings into unity together with
Christ, God improves on the original creation in a number of ways. First, God's
loving and gracious relationship to that creation is revealed more fully than it
would otherwise have been. Second, God is enabled to relate to that creation not
only as creator but also as redeemer. Third, in Christ God adopts human beings as
sons and daughters, making them Christ's 'body', and in the process divinizing
them {CD, XII.23, XXI.16; DDP, 7.15). As Augustine makes especially clear in his
late doctrine of baptism, entry into the church is the beginning, at least, of in?
corporation into Christ. Because God graciously redeems by incorporating hu?
man beings into Christ these three goods really amount to one new relationship
with God, a relationship that Augustine believes is not only the greatest gift that
God can offer, but one that would have been impossible without the Fall.
Unexpectedly, the Fall thus becomes a happy fault (cf. Plantinga (2004)).
We can now return to the angels, and Augustine's picture of evil in City of God.
In writing that ' the whole universe is beautiful, if one could see it as a whole, even
with its sinners, though their ugliness is disgusting when they are viewed in
themselves' {CD, XI.23), Augustine is not invoking an aesthetic theodicy, but as?
serting that the universe as a whole is good, though there are disgusting things in
it, given sin's advent. Sin is not part of the beauty of a larger picture; it remains
foul. Positively, Augustine is arguing (in response to the Manichees; see CD,
XI.22), that creation is fundamentally good, and better than many of his con?
temporaries thought: it might seem evil that the world has been made such that
we can, for instance, be harmed by poisons, but seen in proper perspective, our
physical vulnerability is good, because we are taught the humility that we ought
to have, as those who are dependant on another for our very existence.
Augustine's defence of finitude, and his argument that time and change are
part of the good of a material world full of finite beings, should not be mistaken
for an aesthetic response to evil - when he speaks (as in CD, XI.18) of God en?
riching the course of history by providing antitheses to evil by putting evil to good
use, Augustine is referring to ' a kind of eloquence of events ' in which the beauty
of God's decision to create is revealed over time, through a process in which the
ultimate anti-type is Christ himself (as ancient Christian typological interpret?
ation of scripture indicated). In itself, then, the Fall was simply evil, but God
permitted it, according to Augustine, because God knew that He could bring out
of it a good nonpareil.
Dare we hope?
We are left with an obvious question. Say that Augustine is right in
claiming that God permitted sin because He knew He could bring out of it
the great good not only of a deeper knowledge of Himself but of redemption
through union with Himself, in Jesus Christ. Is the divine permission of evil to be
praised if only some of the persons God created enjoy that deeper relationship
with God?
Augustine, of course, believes that scripture indicates that God will not save the
fallen angels, and only some human beings. Nevertheless, he sometimes wonders
about the logic of this divine decision. And in his late works he provides two
responses to the question why God does not choose to save everyone (neither of
which is that God respects free choice by saving only those who turn to him).
The first is that God would be perfectly just to eternally damn all sinful persons
{CD, XXI.13). However, while this claim indicates that God is not obliged to save
everyone, it fails to address the theodical issues with which we are dealing, be?
cause even if the claim is true, it might still be the case that God shares blame for
sin's advent, for instance, by not having prevented it when he could easily have
done so.
A relevant answer would indicate that God had some good reason for permit?
ting the Fall, while knowing that not all will be redeemed. And Augustine com?
monly appeals to a claim of this sort, when he maintains that God has chosen to
show mercy only to some as a way of both showing the reality and seriousness of
divine justice, and of highlighting the unmerited graciousness of divine mercy, by
contrast (see, e.g. Letter 190). This position is an intensification of the view that
God permitted evil because it could be used to bring about the good of a deeper
knowledge of God - the intensification being that here Augustine suggests that
the best explanation of the scriptural witness concerning God's character and
behaviour is that the Fall and limited forms of punishment by themselves is not
enough to show the full depth of God's justice and mercy; both the Fall and
eternal punishment are required.
Augustine's late theodicy is thus, basically, an argument that a world in which
at least some relate to God as redeemer is beautiful and good in ways that an
alternative world in which none relate to God as redeemer, and there is no evil, is
not. While Augustine never states the claim as it is put in the preceding sentence,
he appears not only to agree with it but take it for granted in his late thought; it is
a basic assumption for him. In response, of course, it is natural to wonder
whether the world Augustine believes God created is in fact the best world God
could have created.10 Augustine does not seem to have asked himself questions
about the existence of a best possible world, but that may be because he did
not find the question appropriate. What he does say is as follows: first, he is
convinced, as the paragraph above states, that a world in which there is sin, and
some are redeemed, exhibits impressive goods. Second, Augustine is convinced
that God is not obliged to actualize any kind of world; in his view, any world God
creates is an unmerited grace, for which we can only be thankful. Third,
Augustine's writings imply that there is no way for us to know what the best
possible world is ; it is for that reason that he contents himself with pointing out
that this world is full of goods we often fail to recognize. Augustine does not
attempt to portray this as the best of all possible worlds - he simply hopes to
defend the goodness of the world that has been revealed, and praise the God who
made it.
Such calls for epistemic humility are common for Augustine, even when he
believes he knows what the church's teaching is or should be. Discussing why
God chooses to save one particular person rather than another, for instance, he
says that he simply does not know:
... why will he [God] in the same situation punish me rather than that fellow or set free
that fellow rather than me?' I have nothing to say; if you ask me why, I admit that the
reason is that I do not find anything to say. And if you again ask why, I reply that the
reason is that, just as his anger is just, just as his mercy is great, so his judgments are
inscrutable. [DDP, 8.18; see 9.21; CD, XX.2; DPS, 8.16; PeccMer, I.21)
Augustine assumes that God has reasons for what God does, and that he might
even learn some of them in the future, but he does not have an inkling of what
they might be - he is unable to see as God can.
This admission of limitation brings our discussion of Augustine's late theodicy
to a close on an important and enduring Augustinian note. Whatever the turns
and adjustments he made on other matters (and perhaps in light of them!),
Augustine was confident throughout his career that human attempts to plumb
the mystery of divine goodness are partial at best. And though Augustine some?
times sounds quite sure of his theodical surmises, he would have agreed that
despite his best attempts to understand the problem of evil, his vision remained
incomplete: 'Scripture did not, after all, say without a reason, Your judgments
are like a great abyss.' 'And yet there is no injustice in God. Why? Who is
not troubled? Who is not forced to exclaim at such a great depth ... ?' {PeccMer,
I.29, 30).11
Abbreviations
C2Ep Contra Duas Epistulas Pelagianorum
Answer to the Two Letters of the Pelagians
CD De Civitate Dei
City of God
CJul Contra Julian
Answer to Julian
DDP De Dono Perseverantiae
The Gift of Perseverance
DeTrin De Trinitate
On the Trinity
DGC De Corruptione et Gratia
Rebuke and Grace
DNC De Nuptiis et Concupiscentia
Marriage and Desire
DPS De Praedestinatione Sanctorum
The Predestination of the Saints
Ench Enchiridion de fide, sep, et caritate
Enchiridion
GnLit De Genesi ad Litteram
The Literal Meaning of Genesis
GPO De Gratie et Peccato Originali
The Grace of Christ and Original Sin
LibAr De Libero Arbitrio Voluntatis
On Free Choice of the Will
NG De Natura et Gratia
Nature and Grace
Oplmp Contra Julian Opus Imperfectum
Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian
PeccMer De Peccatorum Mentis et Remissione
The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins
SL De Spiritu et Littera
The Spirit and the Letter
VerRel De Vera Religione
On True Religion
References
Adams, Marilyn McCord (1999) Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca NY: Cornell University
Press).
Augustine, St (1953) On Free Choice of the Will. 395/6, in J. H. S. Burleigh (ed.) Augustine: Earlier Writings
(Philadelphia PA: The Westminster Press).
(1972) Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans. 413, Henry Bettenson (tr.) (New York NY: Penguin
Books).
(1991) The Trinity, 400-420. in John E. Rotelle OSA (ed.) Edmund Hill OP (tr.) The Works of Saint Augustine,
vol. 5 (Brooklyn NY: New City Press).
(1993) Enchiridion, 423, in Philip Schaff (ed.) Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 3
(Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans).
(1997a) The Grace of Christ and Original Sin, 418, in John E. Rotelle OSA (ed.), Roland J. Teske SJ (tr.) The
Works of Saint Augustine, I/23 (Hyde Park NY: New City Press).
(1997b) Nature and Grace, 415, in Rotelle (ed.), Teske (tr.) The Works of Saint Augustine, I/23.
(1997c) The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Little Ones, 411-412. in Rotelle (ed.),
Teske (tr.) Answer to the Pelagians, I, The Works of Saint Augustine, I/23.
(i997d) The Spirit and the Letter, 412-413. in Rotelle (ed.), Teske (tr.) The Works of Augustine, I/23.
(1998a) Answer to Julian, 421, in Rotelle (ed.), Teske (tr.) Answer to the Pelagians, II, The Works of Saint
Augustine, I/24.
(1998b) Answer to the Two Letters of the Pelagians, 420-421. in Rotelle (ed.), Treske (tr.) Answer to the
Pelagians, II, The Works of Saint Augustine, I/24.
(1998c) Marriage and Desire, 418-421. in Rotelle (ed.), Teske (tr.) Answer to the Pelagians, II, The Works of
Saint Augustine, I/24.
(1999a) The Gift of Perseverance, 427-428. in Rotelle (ed.), Treske (tr.) Answer to the Pelagians, IV, The
Works of Augustine, I/26.
(1999b) The Predestination of the Saints, 427-428. in Rotelle (ed.), Treske (tr.) Answer to the Pelagians, IV,
The Works of Saint Augustine. I/26.
(1999c) Rebuke and Grace, 426-427. in Rotelle (ed.), Treske (tr.) Against the Pelagians, IV, The Works of
Saint Augustine, I/26.
(i999d) Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian, 430, in Rotelle (ed.), Treske (tr.) Answer to the Pelagians, III,
The Works of Saint Augustine, I/25.
(2001) Letters 156-210. in Rotelle (ed.), Treske (tr.) The Works of Saint Augustine, II/i.
Babcock, William S. (1988) 'Augustine on sin and moral agency', Journal of Religious Ethics, 16, 28-55.
Baker, Lynne Rudder (2003) 'Why Christians should not be libertarians: an Augustinian challenge', Faith and
Philosophy, 20, 360-378.
Brown, Peter (1969) Augustine of Hippo : A Biography (Berkeley CA: University of California Press).
Brown, Robert F. (1978). 'The first evil will must be incomprehensible: a critique of Augustine', Journal of
the American Academy of Religion, 46, 315-329.
Burnaby, John (1938) Amor Dei: A Study of the Religion of St Augustine (London: Hodder & Stoughton).
Burns, J. Patout (1980) The Development of Augustine's Doctrine of Operative Grace (Paris: Etudes
Augustiniennes).
(1988) 'Augustine on the origin and progress of evil', Journal of Religious Ethics, 16, 9-27.
Burrell, David B. (1993) Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre
Dame Press).
Chappell, T. D. J. (1995) Aristotle and Augustine on Freedom: Two Theories of Freedom, Voluntary Action, and
Akrasia (New York NY: St Martin's Press).
Couenhoven, Jesse (2005) 'Augustine's doctrine of original sin', Augustinian Studies, 36, 359-396.
Evans, G. R. (1982) Augustine on Evil (NY: Cambridge University Press).
Gilbert, Neal W. (1963) 'The concept of will in early Latin philosophy', Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1,
17-35.
Greer, Rowan A (1996) 'Augustine's transformation of the free will defence', Faith and Philosophy, 13,
471-486.
(2001) Christian Life and Christian Hope: Raids on the Inarticulate (New York NY: The Crossroad
Publishing Company).
Harrison, Carol (2000) Augustine: Christian Truth and Fractured Humanity (Oxford: Oxford University
Press).
Kirwan, Christopher (1989) Augustine (London: Routledge).
MacDonald, Scott (1999) 'Primal sin', in Gareth B. Matthews (ed.) The Augustinian Tradition (Los Angeles
CA: University of California Press), 110-139.
O'Daly, Gerard (1989) 'Predestination and freedom in Augustine's ethics', in Godfrey Vesey (ed.) The
Philosophy in Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 85-98.
Plantinga, Alvin (2004) 'Supralapsarianism, or " O felix culpa" ', in Peter van Inwagen (ed.) Christian Faith
and the Problem of Evil (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans), 1-25.
Rist, John M. (1969) 'Augustine on free will and predestination', Journal of Theological Studies, 20, 420-447.
(1994) Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Rogers, Katherin (2004) 'Augustine's compatibilism', Religious Studies, 40, 415-435
Rombs, Ronnie J. (2006) Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul: Beyond O'Connell and His Critics
(Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press).
Smith, Jonathan Z. (ed.) (1995) The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion (San Francisco CA:
HarperSanFrancisco).
Stump, Eleonore (2001) 'Augustine on free will', in Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzman (eds) Cambridge
Companion to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 124-147.
TeSelle, Eugene (1994) 'Serpent, Eve, and Adam: Augustine and the exegetical tradition', in Joseph T.
Lienhardt SJ, Earl C. M?ller SJ, and Roland J. Teske SJ (eds) Augustine: resbyter Factus Sum. Collectanea
Augustiniana (New York: Peter Lang), 341-361.
(2002) 'Exploring the inner conflict: Augustine's sermons on Romans 7 and 8', in Daniel Patte and Eugene
TeSelle (eds) Engaging Augustine on Romans (Harrisburg PA: Trinity Press International), 111-146.
Wetzel, James (1992) Augustine and the Limits of Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Williams, Rowan (2002) 'Insubstantial evil', in Robert Dodaro and George Lawless (eds) Augustine and his
Critics (New York NY: Routledge), 105-123.
Wolterstorff, Nicholas (1996) 'Barth on evil', Faith and Philosophy, 13, 584-608.
Notes
1. References to Augustine's works are by book, if any, in Roman numerals, and chapter and paragraph, in
Arabic numerals - not to page numbers. I refer to his texts by English titles in the body of my paper, but
by Latin abbreviations in parenthetical citations. See the list of abbreviations above.
2. In fact, however, it is unlikely that Augustine was either the free-will defence's inventor or its greatest
exponent, since he seems to have inherited the idea from Ambrose, amongst others, and because he
came to have doubts about the free-will approach early in his career as a Catholic.
3. From early on, Augustine differed from many of his contemporaries in pursuing the sort of free-will
approach Marilyn McCord Adams calls a 'free-fall' approach, not a 'soul-making' approach (Adams
(1999), 32-33) ; but I will not focus on this issue here.
4. In his later works, carnal concupiscence is Augustine's multi-purpose term for a vitiated fundamental
orientation, and misguided desire. It does not necessarily have anything to do with sexual desire. For a
defence of these claims, see Couenhoven (2005).
5. Greer also rightly suggests that, as Augustine elaborates this picture of the will and choice,
and their relation, over time, he is led to the views expressed in his later writings on grace and
original sin.
6. This shift in his thought is likely connected, in complex ways, to the fact that after about 415 he stopped
flirting with the Plotinian idea that souls sin in heaven before falling to earth ; for an excellent discussion
of the debate about Augustine on the origin of the soul, see Rombs 2006. Given this change of mind, we
should be cautious about making too close a connection between Augustine's early and late
understandings of human responsibility, but that is a topic for another paper.
7. Thus, I disagree with Stump's (2001) contention that Augustine defends libertarian free will in his late
works, but concur with Baker's reading of the late Augustine as a compatibilist; Baker (2003).
Augustine's distinction between voluntas and liberum arbitrium suggests, however, that Baker's
claim that no human act of will is needed for salvation is mistaken: for Augustine, saving grace
reforms the human voluntas, but the consent of the liberum arbitrium is necessary for a full
conversion to take place, and that is a human act of will, though it follows from divine salvific action
by a natural necessity.
8. William Babcock takes Augustine to task on this point; Babcock (1988), 46-52. Scott MacDonald (1999)
gives a perceptive, but ultimately un-Augustinian, defence of Augustine's insight, since he
overemphasizes the role of reason, and marginalizes the role of perverse desire in the production of the
primal sin.
9. Augustine therefore implies (without explicitly saying) that Adam and Eve did not cause the Fall; the Fall
happened to them. This naturally raises questions about what they can be blamed for; my
interpretation, which cannot be defended here, is that Augustine does not blame them for causing the
Fall, but rather for being fallen. Adam and Eve thus end up in much the same situation as their progeny;
they find evil within themselves without having first chosen it.
10. We might also wonder whether it is a good idea to focus more on God's relation to the world than to the
individual persons in that world; I am not sure what Augustine would have thought of that.
11. I would like to thank the Editor of this journal, as well as an anonymous reviewer, for their helpful
comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Von BALTHASAR, H. U., Gloria. Una Estética Teologica, 1. La Percepcion de La Forma, Encuentro, 1985

Transféré par

Informations du document

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Von BALTHASAR, H. U., Gloria. Una Estética Teologica, 1. La Percepcion de La Forma, Encuentro, 1985

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Augustine's Rejection of the Free-Will Defence: An Overview of the Late Augustine's

Augustine's rejection of the free-will defence: an

Abstract: Augustine is commonly considered the greatest early proponent of what

argument - based on a wide knowledge of Augustine's forbearers, and a close

The end of the free-will defence trial period

Whether scholars of Augustine interpret him as a compatibilist or

Augustine's objections to free-will approaches

Augustine's expressions of dissatisfaction with the free-will approach in?

Thus, consent depends on delight.

Augustine grew increasingly committed as he grew older. Augustine's considered

A new 'explanation' of the Fall

We have considered Augustine's reasons for rejecting a free-will theodicy,

(1994) Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi